Judge Delivers Blow To Trump Administration In Dakota Access Fight

Native Americans and their supporters protest in March outside of the White House against the construction of the disputed Dakota Access oil pipeline.

Jose Luis Magana
/ AP

Originally published on June 15, 2017 1:21 pm

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration failed to follow proper environmental procedures when it granted approval to the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline project.

It's a legal victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and environmentalists, who protested for months against the pipeline. Oil started flowing through it earlier this month. The tribe fears that the pipeline, which crosses the Missouri River just upstream of its reservation, could contaminate its drinking water and sacred lands.

In a 91-page memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers "largely complied with the National Environmental Policy Act."

However, he says, the Corps "failed to adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on Standing Rock's fishing and hunting rights and on environmental justice, and in February 2017, it did not sufficiently weigh the degree to which the project's effects are likely to be highly controversial in light of critiques of its scientific methods and data."

This ruling does not order a halt to pipeline operations. But it opens the door to that possibility.

The judge writes that the standard remedy in this situation would be to vacate the pipeline's permits and easement, thereby halting pipeline operations until the Army Corps is in compliance with environmental procedures.

"Such a move, of course, would carry serious consequences that a court should not lightly impose," Boasberg says. He ordered the parties to submit briefings about the legal question and scheduled a status hearing for next Wednesday.

"This is a major victory for the Tribe, and we commend the courts for upholding the law and doing the right thing," Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement. "The previous administration painstakingly considered the impacts of this pipeline, and President Trump hastily dismissed these careful environmental considerations in favor of political and personal interests. We applaud the courts for protecting our laws and regulations from undue political influence and will ask the Court to shut down pipeline operations immediately."

As we have previously reported, "during President Trump's first month in office, he reversed a decision by the Obama administration and called on the Army to expedite the approval process for the section of the pipeline that had not yet been built."

Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline company, has not commented on Wednesday's ruling.

Before this victory, two previous lines of argument by the tribe have not "yielded success," the judge wrote in his opinion. The first argued that "the grading and clearing of land for the pipeline threatened sites of cultural and historical significance," while the second contended that the oil in the pipeline under a lake significant to the tribe "would desecrate sacred waters and make it impossible for the Tribes to freely exercise their religious beliefs."

The pipeline spans nearly 1,200 miles from North Dakota to Illinois, and the pipeline company says it can carry 520,000 barrels of oil daily.

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The Dakota Access Pipeline's route takes it over four states and nearly 1,200 miles, from the Bakken oil fields in northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and down to a terminal in Illinois.

But one Missouri River crossing just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota has become the focal point of a fight over how the pipeline's route was analyzed and approved by the federal government.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has granted an easement allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under the Missouri River north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, paving the way for construction of the final 1.5 miles of the nearly 1,200-mile pipeline.

In doing so, the Army cut short its environmental impact assessment and the public comment period associated with it.

President Trump on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for construction of two controversial oil pipelines, the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access.

As he signed the paperwork in an Oval Office photo op, Trump said his administration is "going to renegotiate some of the terms" of the Keystone project, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of western Canada and connect to an existing pipeline to the Gulf Coast.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said Tuesday that the acting secretary of the Army had directed the Corps of Engineers to "proceed with the easement" necessary for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.